Jon Ewing
Playlists
Head Held High – John D Revelator
26 March 2019
It takes a remarkable sort of songwriter to combine a moral code passed down through the generations with a “fuck you” to a disgraced sibling and turn it into a foot-stomping, uptempo, country-folk barnstormer with a sly sense of humour that can get 1,000 Wurzels fans singing along.
Rollercoaster – India.Arie
5 March 2019
The modern world is dizzying. Mass communication floods our senses with an overwhelming torrent of new ideas and there are countless influencers – celebrities, intellectuals, politicians, business leaders and spiritual charlatans – proposing the path to navigate it all. Indie.Arie’s Rollercoaster is a modern take on the immortal Sixties graffiti gag “stop the world – I want to get off”,…
Pride – Grace Petrie
19 February 2019
Grace Petrie’s bitter-sweet song of solidarity, Pride, movingly articulates the conflicting emotions of life as a gay person in the 21st Century – on the one hand the legacy of dignity earned by 50 years of liberal activism and on the other the rancour at a lifetime of being discriminated against simply for being who you are…
Consolidated – Butyric Acid
6 February 2019
California three-piece Consolidated were a polemical, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist band who embraced punk, hip-hop, electronic dance music and cultural and political influences from all around the globe. With filthy bass, pounding beats and bitterly angry hip-hop vocals,…
Clampdown – The Clash
22 January 2019
They were the self-proclaimed “only band that matters” – The Clash were the voice of a generation, whose music was timely and relevant to its audience in a way that the posturing of pampered pop megastars never could be…
MAH – The Chemical Brothers
16 January 2019
Taking its cue from one of cinema’s most memorable monologues, this taster from The Chemical Brothers’ ninth studio album is a rousing rave rant that uses a sentiment that has touched a nerve with audiences for more than 40 years: “I’m mad as hell. I ain’t gonna take it no mo'”…
All Together Now – The Farm
19 December 2018
Yes, it really happened. On Christmas Eve, 1914, as the first winter of the Great War consumed France and Belgium in conflict, the men on opposing sides in the trenches along the front lines ceased the madness and played football in no man’s land to celebrate peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. This enduringly symbolic moment of humanity is celebrated in the words of All Together Now, a UK Top Five hit by Liverpudlian four-piece The Farm in December 1990…
Another Shooter – Rene Trossman
12 December 2018
The Chicago Tribune website has a page dedicated to a weekly running total of shooting victims, both fatal and non-fatal, in the city. That such a total is needed is enough to tell you that Chicago has a very serious problem with gun crime. In 2017, there were a total of 3,386 victims of shootings – on average, more than nine every day…
Welfare State – Ultrasound
4 December 2018
Ultrasound should have been huge. Fronted by Andrew ‘Tiny’ Woods, they were an explosive art rock indie five-piece from the North of England who dared to combine glam, prog and punk and audaciously released a double album as their debut in 1999 before imploding at the turn of the millennium…
Midnight Creep – Professor Plumb
20 November 2018
No need to lock up your daughters when Denver, Colorado psychedelic metal four-piece Professor Plumb comes around. Midnight Creep is a rumbling, two minute heavy rock celebration of the #metoo movement, eschewing metal’s history of chauvinism, self-indulgence and egotism…
Confirmation Bias – The Sleeping Tongues
14 November 2018
With the staccato delivery of Devo’s Girl U Want and the irresistibly sleazy riffing of The Knack’s My Sharona, Sleeping Tongues mix pop and pop psychology on Confirmation Bias, a song that tells you that you’re only reading this because you expect to agree with what it says…
Resister – She Drew The Gun
16 October 2018
No matter how insignificant and powerless you might feel, you can make a difference. That’s the message of Resister, which starts with an insistent 150 BPM loop and is quickly joined by a torrent of challenging ideas that don’t let up for 2 minutes 53 seconds of uplifting, infectious, political indie pop aimed squarely at motivating “the underdogs, black sheep [and] fighters of the powers that be”…